A further field for a comprehensive survey would be a critical comparison of the modern form with its several ancestral and contributory forms, from original sources.
A third examen would be devoted to the characteristics and tendencies of the present-day short-story as presented in volume form and, particularly, in the modern magazine.
A fourth, would undertake to study the rhetoric of the form.[3]
None of these sorts of study can be exhaustively presented in this volume, yet all are touched upon so suggestively and with such full references that the reader may himself pursue the themes with what fullness he elects. The special field herein covered will be, I believe, sufficiently apparent as the reader proceeds.
Let it be understood from the outstart that throughout this volume the term short-story is used rather loosely to cover a wide variety of short fiction; yet presently it will be necessary to show precisely how the modern form differs from its fictive ancestors, and that distinction will assume some importance to those who care about recognizing the several short fictional forms and who enjoy calling things by their exact names.
The first story-teller was that primitive man who in his wanderings afield met some strange adventure and returned to his fellows to narrate it. His narration was a true story. The first fictionist—perhaps it was the same hairy savage—was he who, having chosen to tell his adventure, also resolved to add to it some details wrought of his own fancy. That was fiction, because while the story was compounded of truth it was worked out by the aid of imagination, and so was close kin to the story born entirely of fancy which merely uses true-seeming things, or veritable contributory facts, to make the story “real.”
Egyptian tales, recorded on papyrus sheets, date back six thousand years. Adventure was their theme, while gods and heroes, beasts and wonders, furnished their incidents. When love was introduced, obscenities often followed, so that the ancient tales of pure adventure are best suited to present-day reading.
What is true of Egypt 4000 B. C. is equally true of Greece many centuries later. The Homeric stories will serve as specimens of adventure narrative; and the Milesian tales furnish the erotic type.
As for the literary art of these early fictions, we need only refer to ancient poetry to see how perfect was its development two thousand and more years ago; therefore—for the poets were story-tellers—we need not marvel at the majestic diction, poetic ideas, and dramatic simplicity of such short-stories as the Egyptian “Tales of the Magicians,”[4] fully six thousand years old; the Homeric legends, told possibly twenty-five hundred years ago;[5] “The Book of Esther,”[6] written more than twenty-one hundred years ago; and the stories by Lucius Apuleius, in The Golden Ass,[7] quite two thousand years old.